I get the sense that people imagine that an average student will probably get an Acceptable in most subjects, with maybe a couple of Poors and a couple of Exceeds Expectations.

But O.W.L. exams are the magical analogue of the real-life GCSE exams which English children take at age 16. The statistics on those exams are:

1. About 70% of children achieve a C-grade in at least one subject, meaning 30% of people effectively fail in all their subjects (C is generally considered the lowest passing grade).
   
   
2. Only around 54% of students get a C-grade in at least five subjects (which must include English and Mathematics), which might be considered the UK version of the high school diploma.

Only about 50% of Hogwarts students are even going to manage to get an A in all of the core subjects. A very large number of students will probably only achieve an A in one core subject, and around 30% are likely to fail to achieve an A in any subject.

All of this is consistent with the fact that most Ministry wizards cannot cast a Shield Charm. When you consider that an Outstanding grade probably corresponds to "the student can cast the spell successfully on their first attempt, and the result is consistently without error" then a person who has achieved an A is going to be having to cast spells multiple times to get it to work properly, and even then the results are highly variable and far from perfect.

So the average wizard probably struggles to cast any spell at all with proficiency - they can cast magic, but everything they do will require several tries and still have problems. This is rather like how the average Muggle can write an email, but it will probably be full of spelling errors, have terrible structure, etc. General wizarding failure to achieve basic proficiency is likely to be analogous to general Muggle failure to achieve the same.

Of course, this all feeds into the evaluation of Harry as a wizard. In general, I think people underestimate how good Harry is because they overestimate the average level of achievement.

 

I like this, but I think perhaps you’re being overly generous if anything.

Because of the general 1950s feel I’ve always taken OWLs to be O levels which predate GCSEs.

If you think about the way people talk about OWLs in the book it reminds me of how older relatives talk about getting 1 or 5 O-levels etc as an achievement - whereas, as you say, 5 GCSEs of greater than C is essentially the school pass mark.

I think this gels with the fact that CSEs (before GCSEs) were supposed to ease the path a little bit from O-levels, and be vocational qualifications, and Hogwarts is supposed to be a rigorous academic education (as much as we might argue we see otherwise in canon).

I think this would translate into OWLs with negative marking and norm-based grades.

The pass mark over-all for 1976 O-levels was 59%. It’s this sort of level that I’ve always imagined coming out of Hogwarts to suit its bowler hat and mystery adventure feel, and why the higher grades are so impressive to the general population (norm-reference based grades saying only the top 10% can have an O then the next 15% an EE or whatever, rather than anyone who passes a grade benchmark achieves this grade or that).

 

I made a previous post a while back, touching on Harry's results and comparing to GCSE results of the time.

Whilst he's no super test taker, Harry actually is in the top 40%, so he's not too shabby at all.

But it depends what gets counted as a core subject, I suppose, on how good of a a student you feel he really is

 

Err, coming from a country where top 40% (or even top 10%) means nothing at all, is Harry really "not too shabby at all?" Genuinely curious about this.

 

Sure we do have bell curves. However, since there's so many people and very few seats in good institutions, being in the top 40% isn't considered a big deal. You'd have to be in the top 1% to get into an Indian Institute of Technology, for example, and in the top 0.1% to get a (highly competitive) major of your choice. Outside the top 2% or so your chances of getting into a good institution (read National University or something) drop off a cliff real fast.

So tbh, no one boasts about being in the top 40%: you're likely to be looked at with derision if you think that's a big deal. Being in the top 40% only makes a difference if you come from circumstances where your parents were completely illiterate, in which case well done.

 

I mean, how much do you remember from secondary school(middle and high school for Americans)?

The average Ministry employee most likely can't produce a shield charm because he or she hasn't used one in upwards of ten years. Even if all of them did well in school, how often do they get into fights? How much of a role does combative magic play in their work and everyday lives? To an extent, I would suspect that many of them do not use magic at all, some days of the week. You floo to work on the week days, spend hours reading and filing reports of accidental magic or something, then floo home.

The average employee might know some housekeeping spells, but that's if they don't have an elf to take care of menial tasks. I would imagine that some spells might even be seen as life hacks, the kind of thing you read on the internet and decide 'no, that's stupid, I'm only going to do this like three times in my life, what's the point?'. If you go into some kind of specialized career in magic, such as making potions, that's probably all you're doing. The division of labor is what generates wealth; it's the third world countries that are full of jacks of all trades.

Possibly as a consequence of the limited need for magic, the standards are what we might imagine to be low. Our perspective character is a boy who has to fight for his life at least once a year, so of course he needs all the magic he can get; some fanfictions have even criticized him for not learning dark magic, going to some other school, or spending every waking hour practicing and studying.

The examiners and whoever the hell sets the standards the examiners have to know are perfectly aware most kids are going to be shit at magic and no good in a fight, but what does it matter? Even if the standards were set during wartime, the kids had the choice as to whether or not they were going to participate, as did most adults. Even if it were not voluntary at all, like somehow they knew they were going to be in the Battle of Hogwarts, kids are bad at priorities. If they've settled on a career while at Hogwarts, they take classes to suit their chosen path. Ministry functionaries probably dropped Defense for Muggle Studies at some point, and whether there are other classes or other levels of education, it isn't mentioned in the books.

 

I think that forgetting spells is a real thing. Human memory is nowhere near perfect. In HP, wizards learn new spells by learning the incantation, wand movement, whatever mental/emotional aspect, and then repeatedly practicing it over and over until it works. Since you learn spells like that, it's certainly not only possible, but almost a surety, that you get rusty with spells you haven't used in years, or even forget how to cast them.

The average wizard has been out of school for decades, and the spells he regularly uses are fairly limited to his work and free time. A Ministry paper-pusher who perhaps, if they were talented at defence, learned the shield spell in school but hasn't used it in forever can't be expected to easily perform the spell. And I think the same goes with most magic. If they could do it before, if they practice a few times and refresh their memory, they can certainly do it again, but most people apparently don't even learn said spell in the first place.

Of course, if you keep your interest, keep using a wide variety of magic, keep learning more, you'll retain most of your school spells. But that's not your average wizard.

As far as grades go, I always considered Acceptable the average. And with that grade, you can fail several times at casting a spell, or it comes off strange until you manage to make it work. So I guess, for the average wizard, they can cast most spells, but not perfectly on the first try.

 

Its actually kinda confirmed on Pottemore that even someone who was good at magic in Hogwarts, can become very bad simply by not continuing to use those spells. That is what apperently happned to Lockhart according to the article about him.

This probably happens quite frequently with wizards only continuing to cast whats useful for their career and daily life.

 

Thankfully, it's been a while since I went to school but if I recall, Grade D and Grade E are considered "Passes", at least in the UK. Of course, pretty much every Sixth Form and College is going to specify "A*-C" when asking for a GCSE qualification rather than say for example "GCSE in Maths" when you might have gotten an E in it.

It does however mean that you can put as your qualifications "12 GCSEs, 4 A Level" even though you might have gotten an E in all of them.

I don't think we actually have Grade F (At least I've never seen one). The only Fail Grade I've seen is "U". First time I saw it, I thought my teacher had made a mistake and it was a rotated C.

 

I always thought of magic being like normal stuff we learn. We learn a whole lot in high school and uni, but I, for one, know I'm only using a fraction of it. Given that you've got specialisations in the HP world, I'd reckon that the concept of division of labour works over there as well. The average wizard is probably as highly specialised as the average person in the real world. You might know some domestic charms, apparition, perhaps some more esoteric magic if you have a hobby which leans in that direction, perhaps some showboating magic for when you go to a bar and wanna pick up single witches, and the stuff you need for work (if any).

I've often seen transfiguration as being the equivalent of algebra or trig in the real world. People constantly complaining about how difficult it is and how they're never going to use it in the real world, no siree, and there'd be cultural debates about how it ought to be replaced with something more useful, like a class on domestic spells. DADA is the equivalent of anti-communist propaganda and/or the patriotic /propaganda-based teaching of history prevalent in China or some such. The average wizard doesn't really need to know how to fight other wizards or even magical creatures: the class exists to indoctrinate young wizards against the "dangers of dark magic."

Charms, herbology and potions seem like fairly uncontroversial subjects to me. Potions is probably also something people drop after their OWLs very quickly: specialisation exists in the wizarding world. However, I can see basic potions being useful for the average witch or wizard: some easy remedies for very common ailments, hangover cures, etc. People who go for advanced potions also probably take herbology even if they don't give two shits about growing the herbs. I can see most potions jobs requiring at least some qualification in herbology. Divination, muggle studies and care of magical creatures seem like easy classes to pass. Free O-levels for those who can get them. Arithmancy and ancient runes are advanced placement classes. You only take them if you want to get into the wizarding world's equivalent of Oxford (I see Hogwarts as the wizarding Eton).

So the average magical person probably struggles through their OWLs, cursing all the compulsory subjects they have to take before getting more breathing room for their NEWTs. They probably don't use most of the spells or potions they've learned in school in their day-to-day lives. I can see Hogwarts students being a bit better given Hogwarts is the premier school in Britain. Maybe even a lot better. But only in their exam results. Hogwarts people probably dominate the ministry the same way people from Eton, Oxford and Cambridge seem to form a kind of monoculture in the UK.

 

I've always thought of Harry as an average wizard who got dropped into exceptional circumstances. He's definitely brave and very willing to throw himself into danger, but I don't remember him being exceptional at anything except the patronus charm and flying. When he drove away a horde of dementors in third year, it looked like he was going to be a 'great wizard' in terms of magical skill. We never saw it again. Everything thereafter was bravery, sacrifice, and Deus-Ex-Wands or friends.

It's hard to know what his grades mean. As an American, I won't pretend to understand the British system. Is an A in a magical discipline the equivalent of a C in an American school? If so, that's pretty damn shitty. While a 'C' is labeled as average, a C student in America isn't getting into a four-year university of any kind. A D student probably won't graduate. That might have worked in 1980, but not with today's grade inflation. A 2.0 GPA means you're heading straight to a trade school (if you're very lucky) or a minimum wage job. (Is a minimum wage job average? Maybe it is, but I had assumed not).

I know Harry became an Auror, but so did Ron. That seems to be a job with a very specific skill set, one that they were prepared for because they fought Voldemort, not because they were exceptional wizards. It would be helpful to know what people like Crabbe and Goyle got on their OWLs. Because they certainly seem like below-average wizards, and if they can scrape an A, then that grade isn't impressive at all.

Maybe we're supposed to view all of the main and secondary characters in the series as exceptional. We just don't realize they're exceptional because we don't spend any time around the average office drones or the incompetents.

 

@darklordmike
I mean, the average high school GPA in America is a 3.38, which is usually a B+ or 87--89% (it differs on HS and weight, so an A in HS algebra isn't worth as much as an A in AP Stats). The 50th percentile on the SAT is a 993 out of 1,600 (combined math and English), but the average college student's SAT score is 1,150---1,350 depending on the college. The 49th percentile on the ACT is a 20, but the average score on the ACT for colleges is 28---32. (All as of 2014.) As of 2016, ~70% of HS graduates attended college, of which ~60% of those students graduated with a Bachelor's after 4 years. ~80% of those students attending college graduated after 6 years.

Our grading system is pretty fucked up, and SAT/ACT scores are probably a lot better of an indicator, but that means an "A" OWL would be like a 993 SAT/20 ACT. That's not good enough to get into most colleges except maybe private ones that just want your money (that have a graduation rate of like 20%). I.E. shitty. You wouldn't get a government job in 2019 if your SAT was under 1000, full stop.

 

Yeah, that makes sense to me. I don't have a problem calling Harry an 'above average' or 'good' wizard. It just seems odd to me to think of him as an exceptional one in terms of expertise or abilities. I never thought of NEWT classes as a form of higher education, but if things like silent casting really are that difficult, then maybe they are. Our view of Harry's abilities is probably skewed because he suffers in comparison to Voldemort and Dumbledore, both of whom have decades on him.

@tikkier2000 showed exactly what I meant about American grade and test score distribution. B+ is in the 50th percentile here now, which almost makes grades meaningless. If an A on an OWL is the equivalent of a 19 or 20 ACT, though, it definitely doesn't qualify the wizard for much of a job or chance at further training. The Stan Shunpike example is a good one.

 

I believe an average Hogwarts student manages an A on their O. W. L.s for most subjects. Hogwarts is the only school of magic in Britain therefore I expect them to have rigorous academic standards and would not let their students fail. Comparison to real world national averages is not apt because there is a huge difference in academic standards among schools.

For me an average wizard is someone who can use magic to get by in their daily lives and competent enough to get help under most circumstances when things go awry.

 

Speculative (in a thread about magical education) but if the Weasleys represent a typical "poor" wizarding family we might expect variation from the typical GCSE results. Wizards will struggle less with nutrition/health and general deprivation than muggles, presumably raising average attainment. Class sizes are also pretty small compared to the muggle average.

Not to mention the fact that unlike lots of struggling British schools Hogwarts has the children of the elite attending, even if it is their only choice. Lucius Malfoy is like any pushy parent, just looking out for his child's quality of education by becoming a governor...